Reward choices feedback

[Zero Grim]

The Feeling:
I feel like since the nighty night update that the reward doors will more often display groups of similar rewards (such as all god boons, all house resources, all dungeon resources).

It is starting to feel like the mirror and rerolls are kinda worthless for getting different types of rooms, if I reroll a house resource room I always get a house resource, if I reroll gold I get health, if I reroll a boon I get another boon, it feels a little samey and makes the choices less of a choice and more of a ranking of importance.

I also have a sneaking suspicion that the game tries to keep the amount of options over a run consistent, if I don't see a Daedalus hammer at the start of act 3 then I always see it two or three rooms later.

The Outcome:
If I am presented with house resources I will always pick Nectar over anything else simply because it is the most expensive to get relative to the others, and my logic holds similar with other choices. (typically, what would cost the most gold to buy)

If I was presented with health up VS a boon, or gold VS a pom I might actually consider the choice for a moment, as it is I just go "which gods boon is best right now" out of a choice of gods, then for everything else its just a matter of looking at all the doors and picking the best resource.

I have seen paired doors of darkness and crystals OR pom and shop so many times, and every time it just saps a little bit of the fun out of the run.

My Thoughts:
I feel like there needs to be either more variance in the rewards offered or more modifiers to rooms rewards to make the choices meaningful.

The lack of variance is probably good for consistently fun runs but it is starting to drain the rogue like fun for me out of the game, I'm on a run of 20+ win streaks right now and can't help but feel I deserved a string of bad luck somewhere in there as much as people who are struggling deserve a 20 boon run to blow off steam.

[Flux_Casey]

Using a fate reroll on a door will always stay in t he same group. As far as I'm aware it's always been that way. If you reroll a boon reward, it'll be another run-specific reward (boon, pom, coin, hammer). If you reroll a currency reward, it'll be another currency reward (darkness, nectar, gems, keys).

As for why it sticks with giving multiple options of the same type of reward, it's probably because of the way the new perks are designed. There's a mirror perk that makes it more likely for run-specific reward rooms to appear. If they had that and still allowed for any combination of room choices to appear there'd almost always be a run-specific room available. I imagine that's something the devs don't want for the sake of game balance.

There is also a bunch of renovations that add run-specific incentives to currency rooms. So they don't continue to be a waste when you get to the point you don't really need them anymore.

[Zero Grim]

the joys of hearing "for the sake of balance" in single player roguelike games, I would much rather have no option on the odds and actually have the room choices feel like choices, as it stands rerolls are just a totally worthless resource then, the one bit of agency you have in a run to determine how the dungeon shapes out and both f them just kinda don't bother changing anything substantial.

An option to have upgrades instead of rerolls would be nice, like half as many but actually do something impactful like upgrading rarity of boons or changing resources into run bonuses.

for something that costs more than literally every other mirror upgraded combined it is the biggest disappointment to finally unlock rerolls.

[lifetake]

Resource rooms are not meant to be seen as normal reward rooms. They are meant mostly to be filler.
Next god boons can be paired with health and poms you're just not playing enough or something because that is a normal occurance.

[lifetake]

Also another thing to note is that a pom, gold, or heart against a shop as a choice is a huge choice because it is basically what you want in a chance in getting to pick a boon or take the guaranteed reward

[Zero Grim]

no, I pay attention and play regularly (this on its own doesn't stop hades being fun), Gold and Health getting paired with god boons is so rare that I would consider it a glitch when it does occur as opposed to intended.

Shops are probably the worst designed choice, you are giving up a boon for the chance to be able to spend gold on buying a boon, gold that if you earned from a room will be worth less than the boon you buy.

I don't think entering a shop by choice is ever worth the room slot, you can spend money at wells and you eventually will get a shop you can't skip OR make it to the temple where any saved gold can always be spent.

if shops got put in the house resource pool then I'd see a lot of value in them, suddenly it isn't about paying or getting a boon for free, its do I save money for the end and gain more house resources or do I spend gold and insure I make it to the end.

Also resources rooms being "filler" rooms doesn't actually happen, sometimes you get runs with less boons and more resources, like my most recent run where roughly half of all the options I had were "darkness or crystals", which wouldn't be that bad if you couldn't earn about 10+ rooms worth of either resource by just completing a single chest.....

[Flux_Casey]

"Shops are probably the worst designed choice, you are giving up a boon for the chance to be able to spend gold on buying a boon, gold that if you earned from a room will be worth less than the boon you buy."

Shops are almost always an opportunity to regain health, which can be a godsend before a boss (pardon the pun). And it's not just the chance to buy A boon, it's a chance to buy MULTIPLE things, which if you're cash rich but powerup poor can be a great thing. It's something that happens to me a lot now thanks to the green mirror money perk and the coin purse artifact. Every run I end up cash rich so the shop tends to be the better option.

"the joys of hearing "for the sake of balance" in single player roguelike games, I would much rather have no option on the odds and actually have the room choices feel like choices, as it stands rerolls are just a totally worthless resource then, the one bit of agency you have in a run to determine how the dungeon shapes out and both f them just kinda don't bother changing anything substantial."

Yeah, balance. Because it's a game that very much encourages experimenting with the mechanics. Something I'm still doing because I know if I and a lot of other people found something that was demonstrably better than any other playstyle I'd use that and only that. It's a testament to the developer's skill that even after seventy hours of play each different playstyle is comparable, just with different pros and cons.

[Uli Minati]

I reroll the rooms in Styx multiple times every single run. In fact, rerolling these rooms has such a large impact on my success that I'd have a really hard time removing rerolls. Why not reroll earlier? Because until Styx, I have no idea what boon combinations RNG will give me, which boons I will be forced to remove (pact), how much money I will have saved up.
Rerolling to boons: to fill up any empty boon slots
Rerolling boons to other boons: to get another chance for a duo or legendary
Rerolling to money: if you want the diamond/blood in Styx
Rerolling to poms: if you have the +1 upgrade duo and/or don't need new boons
Rerolling to health: if you have Aphrodite's +health boon and/or don't need boons/poms
Rerolling house resources: if you are grinding for Darkness or Gems

If the shop isn't your only choice, it's competing against a free boon/health/pom. I almost always go for the freebie too, unless:
I have so much money (maybe Chaos boon, maybe Erebus, or just RNG) that I know I'll end up with extra after buying everything in Styx
I need to buy a heal if I don't want to risk losing a Defiance, which costs 4-5x more than a heal
I have Chaos +Darkness and can get a big heal for cheap
I really want another boon and the freebie isn't offering one

How are these not impactful? Also: for every player who wants much more RNG, there is at least one (at least ten if I go by the people I know) who would dislike "too easy" and "too hard" RNG runs and enjoy Hades' "just right". Getting the "right" combination of boons is just as good as getting many, and getting boons with bad synergy for your weapons is just as bad as getting too few.

[Zero Grim]

The primary issue I have with the way rooms work now is that its just so predictable, if I know that 50% of the choice I have are either "pom+shop" or "darkness+crystal" it really grates on my enjoyment.

As it stands hades is nowhere closed to "balanced" one player can have every mirror upgraded to the max, every item and weapon fully upgraded and no pacts of punishment while another player has the reverse, how do we "balance" and make sure those two runs are the same....
we don't, the people playing the game make that choice by turning the difficulty up or down when they want to. (by either using more pacts, less mirror upgrades, a strategy they are less familiar with ect)

More dials, more options are always a benefit for the player, because anyone who doesn't care about the increased choices can simply not fiddle with them, god mode is a good example of this, people can object to an easy mode in any game but really if the idea someone else has the choice of god mode enrages people then I don't have any time for their opinion.

Room's having more variability that allows room choices to matter would make the game much more strategically interesting, it doesn't have to be more or less boon, but just some options for choices that the player can see coming would be nice.

the well system of buying chests and chaos gates is already there, expanding that system a little more could really inject life into the game. (more mini bosses, room encounters and special contractor items to flood the dungeon could all fill that gap)

I've not owned hades for more than two patches so I don't know what the general trend is, but to go from winter to night updates and see the runs get less varied in choice is a little disheartening, the most balanced yet unpredictable game in the world is flipping a coin, doesn't mean its actually interesting or fun to do more than a few times, I'm just throwing my feedback here because I'd rather not see hades get built into a game of false choices and perfect balance at the cost of enjoyment to people who like to fiddle with things.

[Flux_Casey]

"As it stands hades is nowhere closed to "balanced" one player can have every mirror upgraded to the max, every item and weapon fully upgraded and no pacts of punishment while another player has the reverse, how do we "balance" and make sure those two runs are the same...."

... I have no idea what the hell you mean by this. The mirror represents power progression, the pact represents difficulty progression. So if you skew the two to their opposite extremes, yeah. That would make the game absurdly easy or absurdly difficult respectively. It would also entirely ignore game progression. What you've said here has precisely zero relevance to anything. Balance is the weapons and their aspects each have their strengths and weaknesses that define how you play them. The mirror upgrade paths likewise. Balance is working to make all options viable because players will have preferences on how they want to play.

In fact, in relevance to the exact thing you have issue with. The mirror has a certain pair of upgrades. One offers a higher chance of epic boons. The other increases the chance of run-specific upgrades appearing. Naturally, from everything you've said, you would prefer the latter. I would prefer the former. We have two different preferences and each is entirely viable. Because balance.

As for wanting to choose between resource or run upgrades, endgame makes resources useless. So after a few successful runs, if they gave you a choice between resource or boon, you'd always pick boon. Always.

[Zero Grim]

So "balance" (in a game where you can literally turn the difficulty up or down to any setting you want) is pointless to try and achieve is my position, you can try and balance all the weapons so they are roughly as good as each other in theory (though making them all interesting to play is the better goal, which I feel hades does moderately well), and the same with the pacts and the items and the mirror boons but its also kinda pointless when the combinations are so high that its makes it all meaningless.

If I take the critical bow, Artemis boons and bonus damage to distant targets I can say without a doubt I will have a stronger run than someone who takes a random assortment of weapons and gear, so trying to make the game "balanced" for both players is impossible, you either make it too weak for the player who optimises or too tough for the player who doesn't, all you can do is give the players more tools for easier or more difficult paths through the game. (such as the pact of punishment)

"resources are pointless after a certain point so you'd always take the boon"
this is the issue, if I have a run where I get 20 darkness rooms in a row, and you get a run getting 20 boons in a row we obviously can say your run would not only be easier but more interesting.
The +5 health, 20 gold, reroll and +1 level to boon are an attempt to make resource doors worth picking but the fact you would never, ever pick a resource door over a boon door proves its not enough, if you could tell the game to simply never give you resource doors you would turn that on and leave it on forever. (not to mention earning resources from treasure troves makes earning from room rewards completely redundant)

so why not just have a "Blitz" mode where you get half as many rooms, always get run specific rewards at the end of them and earn crystals, keys, darkness and nectar based on the heat level and/or depth reached, that would not only cut away pointless filler rooms but also give a reward for heat levels and allow players to grind house resources in an alternative way.

The true solution is have more options for what options you get in resource rooms, as it stands for run specific rooms you can get:
Gold
Health
A Shop
A Deadulus Hammer
Boons from:
Zeus
Poseidon
Athena
Aphrodite
Artemis
Ares
Dionysus
Hermes
Demeter

In contrast your options for house resources are
Darkness
Crystals
Keys
Nectar

not only do you have no incentive for your run to take any of these resources without buying upgrades for them first, there is far less variety both in the available options AND no choices of events or options when you do take them, unlike all boons, poms and hammers giving you a choice of three outcomes which further makes them more interesting.

As it was said before they are just filler, boring, repetitive, pointless filler, if you could bypass chambers by skipping their rewards I feel like most players wouldn't give it a second of thought before skipping all the way to the next boon.(if chaos gates were in every room, for instance)

A solution I would like to see might be not seeing what type of reward we get from the next room but the difficulty instead, perhaps using the skull system in a more advanced way, do you go into an easy room that will pay out with a small amount of house resources or go into the more difficult one that pays out more, suddenly its not a choice between "which house resource is the best to pick" its "how much do I want to risk my health for house resources" which IS a non trivial choice.

[Ambassador of Benevolence]

I feel relieved when I get the Chaos boon that temporarily hides rewards. It's more fun, in some ways, to be surprised. And instead of being bored fighting through a gem room (20 gold, slightly better than an urn!) you have that open-the-chest feeling.

It's almost as if by default the rewards should be hidden, but some trinkets/skills/upgrades let you see shops or one time use to see in, or god trinkets let you see their reward.

They could also add in house upgrades that gave house resources a greater chance to spawn a chaos gate/trove/etc, so you'd have more strategy/farm reasons to pick them.

[Lorska]

Balance might be pointless for you in this game. But I would argue most people that progress through their first runs until they eventually win would prefer a somewhat balanced experience.

A baseline balance is fairly important because if a game feels way too easy or way too hard to begin with (especially rogue lites where the run progression resets all the time) there is a real risk for players to lose interest.

Also I think you are not understanding what balance actually means considering you compared a player making good decision with a game plan in mind vs a drooling idiot picking boons at random.

Actually I'm fairly sure there is a hard minimum and cap for boon rooms per level and it forces that depending on which rooms you pick, so you can't only get resources, the game forces at least some boons on you and you can't only get boons either. The %increase does affect these minimums/caps too I believe.

Also saying it's pointless to take resources when you need these to progress overall is just weird. Yes they are not as good as getting a boon but they aren't supposed to.

You're not supposed to easily reroll into nectars because then one good early boon could let you steamroll everything. You can still force the better rolls if you have multiple exits on the same pool.

I always save my authority for boon rerolls after I have a direction to go in. Basically I want to have 2 boons and have at least 2 exits and be some rooms into the current floor to have a chance for the valuable dual boon rooms.